The Janitor's Watch
They came to erase God from the world. They found one man who wouldn't let Him go.
Alphonse Boudreaux has worked the night shift at a New Orleans hospital for nineteen years. He mops floors. He keeps to himself. He stopped praying three years ago, the night his wife died and God, as far as he could tell, didn't show up.
Then the crosses start disappearing.
Not stolen. Not burned. Dissolved - silently, worldwide, within hours - every crucifix, every rosary, every carved stone angel in every graveyard on Earth, gone like they were never there. Governments panic. Churches empty or overflow. The Vatican goes dark. And in an empty hospital chapel, an old radio crackles to life and asks Alphonse Boudreaux to be its voice.
The Altarrans didn't come to conquer. They came to close a door - one Alphonse's own species opened centuries ago without knowing it, and one something far older than either of them is trying to force back open. To shut it for good, the aliens need something that can't be melted down or taken away: a belief chosen freely, by someone who has already stood at the edge of losing it.
They need a man who doesn't believe anymore. They need Alphonse.
The Janitor's Watch is a story about grief and doubt, about the quiet stubbornness of showing up for the people you love with no promise it will be enough - and about what it costs an ordinary man to become, against every instinct he has left, extraordinary.
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